4.16.2008

ON PIT ROAD: Monsters, music and Cornelia Marie

This week, for no apparent reason, I've stayed up late, gotten up way too early, thought about races, rules and tracks in the middle of the night. The blog's being updated more than once every 2 1/2 weeks. I've finally forced myself to look at schedules, plot out a course and, naturally, already booked my first doubleheader weekend of the year.

For those of you scoring at home, that comes this weekend when GWC hits the Ridge for the PASS opener on Saturday before hoofing it over to Lee USA for the ACT 100 on Sunday. Sorry, there's no easing into things over here.

So hit the Wal-Mart for a couple cases of Monster, toss the E Street catalog into the Subaru and charge up the batteries on the cell phone and laptop. It's going to be a wild ride...

Anybody seen my keys?!?!

*****

Despite public declarations to the contrary, there are no updates from Unity Raceway.

Track owner Ralph Nason said that he's received a few more phone calls in the last week, but that no one has made any kind of an official offer to lease the track. No matter how anyone on either side of the equation wants to spin it, that means no one has said, "We'll give you this for it," and no one in the Nason family has said, "Yep, that sounds good."

"That's not bad driving for a girl."-- NHRA legend John Force, after seeing his daughter and new Funny Car points leader Ashley Force win a semi-final round at Las Vegas on Sunday

*****

You know what else I hate? Pop quizzes -- the kind that make me feel like an idiot, even where there are "no wrong answers."

Bull.

What kind of an ostrich with his head in the sand his whole life has never heard of no-bake cookies?

*****

Only NASCAR fans can gripe so endlessly about television coverage of the sport.They complain when ESPN runs sports scores across the bottom of the screen during Nationwide Series races. They complain that SPEED doesn't cover enough practice. They complain that John Roberts has a hair blowing the wrong way in the wind, for pete's sake. (BTW, who's Pete?)

The topper came last Saturday night, when they complained about not getting enough of a pre-race show as FOX kept with the Red Sox-Yankees game that had been delayed by rain.

People, people, people. It's a pre-race show. Pre-race, as in, not the race.

You got flag-to-flag coverage. Of the race. As promised.

You know what I got? I got a 2-strike fastball from Jonathan Papelbon that stopped halfway to home plate because FOX cut away to the race. I don't mind that so much -- but a little warning that the game was moving to FX would have been nice. If the shoe was on the other foot, a bunch of tattooed Dale Jr. fans would have torched Charlotte to the ground in frustration.

American Heritage Dictionary defines jib or jibbing as: “To stop short and turn restively from side to side.” To use in a sentence: As we stood next to the bar after the ninth Budweiser of the evening, her eyes were saying “no” but the rest of her was jibbing “yes, yes, yes.”